The Accountant is an entertaining action thriller that is noteworthy because of Ben Affleck’s performance and the unique twist of having the gun-toting protagonist autistic. The film starts when Affleck’s character, who later goes by the alias Christian Wolff, is a child suffering from severe autism whose parents become increasingly frustrated with his inability to act “normally.” Interspersed with flashbacks to his difficult youth with a particularly strict military father, the film follows Christian as an adult with a secretive and sinister career. Due to his proficiency with math and anti-social tendencies, he becomes an accountant illegally cooking the books for drug traffickers, terrorists, and other major criminals. Part of his cover, he takes a job as a financial consultant at a cutting-edge robotics company, hired to discover a large mysterious loss of money. With the aid of the company’s internal accountant played by Anna Kendrick, he discovers something nefarious at the company owned by John Lithgow’s character. All the while, Christian who is simply known as “The Accountant” is being pursued by the gung-ho director of financial crimes at the Treasury Department, played by J.K. Simmons. Towards the film’s conclusion, it becomes much more of an action flick after the weapons proficient Christian encounters a hitman and his highly militarized personal army. Christian is highly sought-after because of his involvement with many criminal organizations and his association with the robotics company. Overall, I found the movie to be an interesting take on the action genre, albeit a little preposterous in its premise involving an autistic criminal and assassin. I was most surprised by its seemingly accurate portrayal of people with autism, complete with the character being highly sensitive to loud noises and light. It is worthy to note that the subject matter involving autism may be controversial but the filmmakers try to present Christian’s struggles fairly and how external forces, particularly his cruel father, took advantage of him.
KEITH on Reels 